


Indebted (The Careful Stitches Remix)

by mapped



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Friendship, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-17
Updated: 2017-09-17
Packaged: 2018-12-26 05:55:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12052719
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mapped/pseuds/mapped
Summary: Stitches are for torn things. Split-apart things.No amount of stitches could be enough for debts that must go forever unrepaid.





	Indebted (The Careful Stitches Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [enthugger](https://archiveofourown.org/users/enthugger/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Debts, Hatred, and other benefits of being friends with Charles Vane](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11636322) by [enthugger](https://archiveofourown.org/users/enthugger/pseuds/enthugger). 



> Thank you to [xJuniperx](http://archiveofourown.org/users/xjuniperx) for the beta.

The needle pushes through your skin. Your jaw tenses.

* * *

You don’t blame Charles Vane for this. You blame yourself. You remember him dreaming of Eleanor Guthrie through an opiate opacity, lying shirtless on the floor of a stinking tent, choking on the poisoned fumes of a love that was always inexplicably, incongruently vital to him. Day after day of this smoke-wreathed madness. He left, and you were _glad_. Good riddance to this brutal beast who always looked at you the same way you looked at moth-eaten holes in a fine jacket—but worse still, because he had never seen any value in you at all.

When he was gone, you thought of his dark-tanned torso, crossed with scars like clumsy seams. You survived him, but you had no such scars to show for it.

Then he came back, and you were glad, too, and that was your own madness. An entirely clear-headed one. And really, that’s obviously your fault, isn’t it?

* * *

Two things: you always remember him leaving, and you always remember leaving him.

* * *

When all that gold became yours, when you looked at the world and felt like Midas at the start, so much _potential_ and nothing holding you back, you got yourself new clothes. Fabric touched your hands and you touched back, sank your fingertips into it, discovered its lush texture, inhaled the milky newness of its scent.

You asked if Anne wanted a coat too; she shrugged, as she is wont to do. Somehow this turned into long languid evenings of you sketching out a design for it while you listened to the clink and clatter of gold downstairs. Anne wouldn’t appreciate the little details, but she would secretly be pleased by the effort you put into it. At least you hoped so. In the end, she picked up the finished product from the tailor’s and stared at it for a great deal longer than you would ever have expected Anne to contemplate a common _garment_ while you stood there wringing your hands, before she finally muttered, “It’s pretty,” and slipped her arm through one sleeve.

But it wasn’t until the two of you walked through the door of the brothel and Max laid her shining eyes upon Anne’s new coat and then instantly, warmly, gratefully upon _you_ that you felt complete, somehow, like the thread tied off at the end of a stitch, your whole body prickling with satisfaction. _Pride_. Forget the Twelve Labours of Hercules; impressing Madame Max is a feat that ought to elevate anyone who accomplishes it to the status of a hero.

The subtle purple of the coat complemented Anne’s hair; the embroidery was beautiful and intricate without being loud. It didn’t draw the eye, but once the eye was already _there_ , it was hard to look away. Only you and Max would look at all, because Anne Bonny isn’t the sort of woman anyone dares to look at, but you knew Max appreciated it as much as you did, and there was some odd sense of intimacy in that.

You found yourself wondering, momentarily, whether Charles would like new clothes too, but it was an absurd notion. You couldn’t imagine it. Charles Vane, new clothes? The man barely knew what a shirt was most days—and for the days when he _did_ know, he depended upon that one solitary shirt in his pitiful, unglamorous wardrobe. Whatever would he need another shirt for?

That night you lay awake in your enormously empty bed, envisioning Anne’s coat falling to the floor of Max’s room, and the bruises on Charles’ naked back like wildflowers, though he would punch you if you ever described them to him that way. Make wildflowers bloom on your jaw, too.

* * *

You’re leaving him again.

Smoke billowing around you, blood all over you, Anne’s lips on yours. Then Charles. Charles.

Charles’ arm solid around your back after you stumbled out of the ruined carcass of the wagon, supporting you as you winced and hobbled into freedom. Only moments. Moments, one painful breath and another, and then you are on a horse, clinging to Anne, and you are leaving him. He’s been shot and he screams at you, _Go!_ , over and over, and you are leaving him.

You left him. Months ago you left him, to be captured, to _hang_. But you are always leaving him. His arm is around you, and then it isn’t.

* * *

Funny how Charles was always fighting and was always wounded, covered in cuts and slashes, so often that his injuries must be no more irritating than buzzing flies to him, but you never once saw him getting stitched up. That’s funny. You’ve been at Anne’s side plenty of times while the ship’s surgeon tended to her, jabbed a needle into her as you grimaced on her behalf and she rolled her eyes at you. But Charles? Not once.

He was there, that time you had to get stitched up. That time you thought hysterically that you were going to die as you sat bleeding on the deck of the ship the _Ranger_ was trying to take, clutching the gash in your side with your sticky hands, your heart pounding harder than cannon-shot, and he was _there_ , grabbing you, shaking you, his hands replacing your own. You thought you were going to die and you pressed your forehead against his shoulder and you weren’t really going to die at all but that was—that was nice. The battle swirled around the two of you like dust motes, slowing with your heartbeat.

Later, he was there, for a mere minute. Maybe less. As the needle punctured your skin, he observed, so silent and unmoving he might as well have been a smooth monolith in the room. That’s right. Charles Vane was stone, grey and unyielding, but sometimes, sometimes you looked at him and saw something else. Sometimes you saw the ripple of fabric. You felt it, when he touched his hands to your wound and held you together. The give and softness of something that could let itself be moulded to you, if only for a blinding, desperate moment.

It couldn’t have been the first time you’d ever got stitches, but—it’s the first time you remember. 

He was gone before the third stitch, and Anne was there.

* * *

You fought today. You fought like _Hell_ , with every scrap of energy you didn’t know you had. You wanted to fight hard enough that you’d either die or you’d carry this battle with you for the rest of your life, however short or long it may turn out to be.

Let them slice you open, you thought, flinging yourself at the enemy, offering yourself to their blades the same time as you swung wildly at them. You wanted to be marked by this battle, wanted it to incise your soul. _I survived Charles Vane_ , you wanted to bellow, to howl. Wanted to fashion it into your war cry. _I survived Charles Vane_ , and you would mean simply that you have outlived him, that you are still in this world, existing, breathing, railing, whereas he is not.

And now your arm is being stitched up, and you are gritting your teeth, thinking of the tangle of scars on Charles’ bare skin, the clumsy seams. The strange and ready ease with which he let certain sharp things rip through him: Eleanor, for one. His past as a slave, for another.

You remember being a boy—you couldn’t have been older than six or seven—grasping the end of a thread and a thin silver needle, crying in frustration because you couldn’t put one through the other. You remember being even younger than that, wading into a frothy pool of cotton and laughing.

You dreamt once that you touched Charles’ scars, ran your fingers along the bumpy ridges of them, and you told him that you could have done a better job stitching him back together than whichever incompetent prick did it the first time round.

* * *

The doctor’s hands are skilled enough, steady with experience, slow. Anne comes in, impatient, demanding, and drives him out dismissively before she starts questioning you. She doesn’t understand you. Doesn’t matter. You’ve not always understood her either, but you’re still here, and she’s still here, and that’s all that means anything, at the end of the day.

Now that Charles is gone, what is left but your debts to him?

“I ain’t here to figure out who I am,” Anne says, and you think, _Me neither._ You already know who you are. Every careful, loathsome stitch. 

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are really appreciated! <3 Come find me on [tumblr](http://reluming.tumblr.com/).


End file.
